As suggested in an earlier post and predicted by the Palaeography Working Group’s final paper, King’s College, London is now advertising for its newly rebranded Chair in Palaeography and Manuscript Studies. Details can be found on the KCL website here, … Continue reading
Ælfric Bata, about whom little is known other than he was a student of Ælfric of Eynsham and that he wrote Latin scholastic colloquies, offers a nice picture of monastic book sales presumably from around the first part of the … Continue reading
On February 7, a few of us in the department received an email from Egypt. At first glance, I thought this might be one of the periodic letters we get claiming a desire to learn about conversion and Christianization and … Continue reading
I recently started the lucid, engaging, careful and exciting Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire by William Johnson (Oxford UP, 2010). While the body chapters will be of most interest to those specifically engaged with particular authors, … Continue reading
A few weeks ago I found myself in a furniture store with my wife when we ran across this: Recognizing the seal and the garter (as the royal coat of arms of the UK and the garter from the chivalric … Continue reading
Previously, I mentioned Malcolm Parkes’s transfer units and again in relation to how scribes worked. I’d like to not a relatively recent article that gives some modern, empirical support to the transfer unit, albeit somewhat indirectly. In “Syllables as functional … Continue reading
When we read a medieval text (or one from many other periods), we read a reconstruction that represents the work of modern editors (even an authorial autograph has errors, corrections and corrigenda; in most cases textual witnesses are several steps … Continue reading
Recently, a colleague was discussing the procurement of personal preachers in particular places during the later Middle Ages, which piqued my interest. So I asked about the arrangement, that is whether these people were paid or if the relationship was … Continue reading
As you can see, I am trying to note medieval book prices as I come across them after Gneuss’s psalter colophon piqued my interest (and so I thought to give categorize the notes). For the Gutenberg Bible, customers paid around … Continue reading
A little later than the note reported by Helmut Gneuss is a notice found in the pastedown of a manuscript in Pembroke College, Cambridge (dated ?1170).* It states:** Pentatuchus. Iob. duodecim prophete. Math. et luc. cum pergameno salterii et epistolorum … Continue reading